rise to superintend the operations--and then suddenly find she had lost
her box.

Then she would absolutely haunt the ship. Wide-eyed and distressed of
face she would wander hither and thither, peeping into the galley,
peeping down the forescuttle, never uttering a word or wail, searching
like an uneasy ghost, but dumb.

She seemed ashamed to tell of her loss, ashamed to let any one know of
it; but every one knew of it directly they saw her, to use Mr Button's
expression, "on the wandher," and every one hunted for it.

Strangely enough it was Paddy Button who usually found it. He who was
always doing the wrong thing in the eyes of men, generally did the
right thing in the eyes of children. Children, in fact, when they could
get at Mr Button, went for him con amore. He was as attractive to them
as a Punch and Judy show or a German band--almost.

Mr Lestrange after a while closed the book he was reading, looked
around him and sighed.

The cabin of the Northumberland was a cheerful enough place, pierced by
the polished shaft of the mizzen mast, carpeted with an Axminster
carpet, and garnished with mirrors let into the white pine panelling.
Lestrange was staring at the reflection of his own face in one of these
mirrors fixed just opposite to where he sat.

His emaciation was terrible, and it was just perhaps at this moment
that he first recognised the fact that he must not only die, but die
soon.

He turned from the mirror and sat for a while with his chin resting
upon his hand, and his eyes fixed on an ink spot upon the table-cloth;
then he arose, and crossing the cabin climbed laboriously up the
companionway to the deck.

As he leaned against the bulwark rail to recover his breath, the
splendour and beauty of the Southern night struck him to the heart with
a cruel pang. He took his seat on a deck chair and gazed up at the
Milky Way, that great triumphal arch built of suns that the dawn would
sweep away like a dream.

In the Milky Way, near the Southern Cross, occurs a terrible circular
abyss, the Coal Sack. So sharply defined is it, so suggestive of a void
and bottomless cavern, that the contemplation of it afflicts the
imaginative mind with vertigo. To the naked eye it is as black and as
dismal as death, but the smallest telescope reveals it beautiful and
populous with stars.

Lestrange's eyes travelled from this mystery to the burning cross, and
the nameless and numberless stars reaching to the sea-line